The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

?php
>

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Intelligence Community Election Finding Based on Clinton Opposition Research - Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield

Every piece of evidence shows that the piece of Clinton opposition
research was the whole basis for the Russia conspiracy theory.

BuzzFeed's post-election decision to publish the Clinton-Steele
dossier may have been the single biggest blow to Team Coup. Because
every piece of evidence shows that the piece of Clinton opposition
research was the whole basis for the Russia conspiracy theory.
Everything from the original eavesdropping on Trump associates to the
Mueller investigation are the fruits of that poisoned tree.

Former CIA Director John Brennan’s insistence that the salacious and
unverified Steele dossier was not part of the official Intelligence
Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election is
being contradicted by two top former officials. Recently
retired National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers stated in a
classified letter to Congress that the Clinton campaign-funded memos did
factor into the ICA. And James Clapper, Director of National
Intelligence under President Obama, conceded in a recent CNN interview
that the assessment was based on “some of the substantive content of the
dossier.” Without elaborating, he maintained that “we were able to
corroborate” certain allegations. ... The
dossier, which is made up of 16 opposition research-style memos on Trump
underwritten by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s own
campaign, is based mostly on uncorroborated third-hand sources. Still,
the ICA has been viewed by much of the Washington establishment as the
unimpeachable consensus of the U.S. intelligence community. Its
conclusions that “Vladimir Putin ordered” the hacking and leaking of
Clinton campaign emails “to help Trump’s chances of victory” have driven
the “Russia collusion” narrative and subsequent investigations
besieging the Trump presidency.

Except that the
ICA process was badly tainted, in ways that Paul goes into at greater
length, but the key point here is that...

Except that the ICA did not reflect the consensus of
the intelligence community. Clapper broke with tradition and decided
not to put the assessment out to all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies for
review. Instead, he limited input to a couple dozen chosen analysts from
just three agencies — the CIA, NSA and FBI. Agencies with relevant
expertise on Russia, such as the Department of Homeland Security,
Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department’s intelligence
bureau, were excluded from the process... A source close to
the House investigation said Brennan himself selected the CIA and FBI
analysts who worked on the ICA, and that they included former FBI
counterespionage chief Peter Strzok. “Strzok was the
intermediary between Brennan and [former FBI Director James] Comey, and
he was one of the authors of the ICA,” according to the source.

So we have Clinton opposition research being rolled into an ICA which
was limited to a handful of people who would have the right opinions.

The ICA was presented as the gold standard. But like everything else in this process, it was really fool's gold.

And what really happened is that Hillary Clinton's political allies
took her opposition research and treated it as the basis for an official
assessment.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/270193/intelligence-community-election-finding-based-daniel-greenfield Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.